It is known to provide extendable sun visors for vehicles, with the intended purpose of allowing greater flexibility for the user in positioning the sun visor to prevent or reduce glare. Prior art designs often are simply a visor panel or blade which the user can manually slide along a support arm, or from within a main visor body panel, to translate the panel from a first position to a second position.
With reference to FIG. 1, it is also known to provide an extendable sun visor assembly 10 including a visor panel 12 and a support arm 14. Visor panel 12 is configured for rotation about an axis defined by support arm 14, allowing the panel to be translated between a raised position (in a substantially coplanar orientation with a vehicle passenger compartment roof) and a lowered position to block sun glare. A bracket 16 may be included for securing the assembly 10 to a vehicle (not shown). Bracket 16 may include an articulated portion 18 allowing the arm 14 to be rotated outwardly and/or downwardly to adjust the visor panel 12 to a preferred position. Visor panel 12 may also include a retainer 20 which is engaged by a cooperating receiver (not shown) disposed in the vehicle (typically on or near the passenger compartment roof) to hold the panel 12 in place.
A translating mechanism 22 may be provided including a channel or track defined within the visor panel 12 and further including a compression spring 24 for biasing the panel 12 from a stowed configuration to a deployed configuration. In turn, a carrier 26 may be included, slidably received within the channel or track and within which arm 14 is slidably received, for translating the visor panel 12 between the stowed configuration and the deployed configuration. A catch 28 may be provided to retain the visor panel 12 in one or both of the stowed configuration and the open configuration.
While effective for their intended purposes, the above-described prior art extendable sun visors suffer from various deficiencies. Specifically, manually extendable sun visor designs may not be apparent to the user, i.e. the vehicle owner may not be aware that the sun visor is extendable, and there is nothing on the sun visor that indicates such extendibility. Moreover, conventional extendable sun visor designs can require significant effort to operate, and may not extend sufficiently far out to block sun glare for all users. Thus, a need is identified in the art for improvements to extendable sun visor designs.